“So like, Dan wants to get in the shower, and I’m all like, ‘don’t drop the soap’.”

“Mm-hm…”

“And Dan starts like, freaking out… and there’s a flashback of him dropping soap as a kid.”

“Uh-huh…”

“And then there’s a bear.”

…and that’s how I explained this comic to Rich on Monday night. While I was already a few glasses of wine deep into the conversation, I’m pretty sure that even if completely sober, my explanation would have been identical.

Whether or not this is a good thing is still under investigation.

Anyways, it’s been forever since Dan was in a comic! What’s up with that? I need cartoonishly silly things happening to him. In this case, it happened to be a bear.

Considering Dan has no scars that might indicate claw wounds, we can safely assume he made it out of that situation without a scratch on him.

So I was at the bank yesterday waiting in line for the one machine in the building, and when the man infront of me got his turn, his phone rang. Initially, he didn’t answer and started his transaction, but soon after punching in a few numbers, he took the call…

… and proceeded to ignore the machine. Surely, this gentleman couldn’t be serious; there was a line full of people waiting for the only machine, and this guy was waiting to finish his call before continuing his transaction. I’m a pretty sheepish guy, so I wasn’t prepared to tap him on the shoulder or anything, and maybe I’d be wrong to do so if I had the inclination, but I feel as though the guy was being pretty rude.

The twenty-something year old guy standing directly behind me certainly thought so, and wasn’t afraid to say it just quietly enough that only I could hear.

Cue the door opening.

A young woman with two slightly older than toddler age children strolls in and gets in line. Her kids, being the explorative fellows that they are, dash for the wheelchair ramp and start climbing all over it. She begins to yell at them and, possibly in an attempt to drown her out, they pull out baby sized metal flashlights and start smacking a pole.

The noise attracts the attention of the cellphone gentleman, who, still talking on the phone, turns around, glares at the children, and finally at the mother before turning back to the machine he wasn’t using.

Yeah, cellphone guy, she’s the rude one.

Minutes later, the call is completed and the man finally finishes his transaction. Making sure not to piss off everyone in the line any further, I completed my deposit without any hesitation and got out of the way.

The young man behind me mutters “finally,” under his breath in a nasty tone and approaches the machine. The children, who had halted their thunder practice at the pleading of their mother, apparently thought they would start getting rusty and whipped out their percussive flashlights again.

Just as I was walking out the door, the young guy, this time pretty audibly, says, “shut the $#&% up.”

Now, I totally understand that the guy was upset. He had to wait an unusually long amount of time to use the machine, and maybe was in a rush, or had a bad day, or something. It just seems that cursing at kids, especially ones that aren’t your own, is a pretty lame thing to do.

Maybe my opinion would be different at a movie theater or a fancy restaurant, but we were at a bank; I do not believe that one is necessarily entitled to quiet enjoyment while at a bank.

So this question goes out to you guys: While I’m pretty sure we can all agree that the cellphone guy was rudely wasting people’s time and could have called his friend/wife/whatever back later, was the younger man over the line when he got pissed at noisy kids while in a bank? Should we expect silence in places like banks, post offices, and stores?

Discussion (14) ¬

“Was the younger man over the line when he got pissed at noisy kids while in a bank? Should we expect silence in places like banks, post offices, and stores?”

1.) The young guy was just pissed at having to wait, and didn’t have the balls to yell at the guy he was actually angry at, but at little kids.
A Grade-A douchnozzle move in my book.

2.) Not really. But being a loud jagoff at the wrong place/time can have a real cost. My cousin once was having a very loud argument on a cell phone with his then girlfriend without really paying attention to his surroundings. Turns out that yelling “You dumb twat” at the back of a six foot tall ex-bouncer does not end well.

I think the guy on the phone was much more rude than the swearing man, but I still don’t like how any of them acted. At least the mom was trying to quiet them down and it’s pretty much common knowledge that kids are brats. The guy shouldn’t have sworn at them. I think the mom and kids were the least rude of the bunch, because adults should know better than kids. The swearing guy was obviously acting out because the phone guy was so rude. I’m a cashier and I hate it when people stop to talk on the phone in the middle of a transaction while holding the line up more than screaming kids. At least with the kids you usually see the parents trying to do something about it. With the phone calls you have to awkwardly stand there and deal with the customers behind the person being angry and taking it out on you.

Well I’m not going to answer the questions, because there is a ton of factors (what if the guy’s mentally challenged (bi-polar, MDD, etc.), or what if some people do this on purpose, or some people are just not grown of maturity yet (I’m thinking of the password to your wifi, again, Alex.)).

I have kids, so when I’m at a place where they start romping about and being annoying, I just march over and bust out the same father tone with them that I use on my own kids. I don’t care who’s kids they are. Never had a parent say a word to me. The kids just get this @[email protected] look and shut up, generally. Not always, but most of the time.

I would have told the cellphone guy after a minute that he’s holding up traffic and to get on with his business, but I’ve never been very shy about those kinds of things.

You can blame the parents all you want, but sometimes kids are just little @#$%s. I mean, the guy had to wait for some jerk to go about his conversation while ignoring the machine. He was probably in a hurry, or maybe having a bad day. Or, has a bad disposition. So I can understand him having a breaking point.

And I can understand his not telling the rude guy at the machine to hurry up or stop being a douchebag. Our society is geared towards not telling other people that they are terrible people. Like smokers or the morbidly obese. Yes, I think that the obese are bad people. Not bad as in terrible or evil, but bad as is they are not good. Because they don’t keep healthy. Anyway.